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Thursday, March 17, 2016

UK: Responding to British Marxists’ “Papal Edict” against Israel

In December, the British journal the New Left Review
published a piece by its long-time editor Perry Anderson entitled “House
of Zion,” calling for the destruction of Israel. Given the
publication’s influence on the Western left, the article amounted to
“the Marxist equivalent of a papal edict,” in the words of the editors
of Fathom. Michael Walzer notes its author’s sympathy for violence and contempt for those who desire peace:

Whether [Anderson] favors a purely
political or also a military fight, violence or non-violence, is
unclear. He doesn’t talk about terrorism at all, though he hints at the
usual apologetic account of it (“an explosion of frustration and
despair”). His last paragraph seems to call for Arab states to threaten
war against Israel (once they are in full control of their “strategic
emplacements”). But his militancy is non-specific.

What is certain is that he has nothing
but contempt for any Palestinian politician who isn’t actively engaged
in “resistance.” All those who hope for mutual accommodation between
Jews and Palestinians, who are ready to accept a state alongside Israel
and to call for the end of the conflict, who are engaged in a common
struggle against terrorists and religious fanatics, who are trying to
turn the Palestinian Authority into a nascent state—these are the chief
villains in Anderson’s story. The sentences about them are one long
angry sneer: they are “compliant notables,” “placemen,” “cost-effective
surrogates for the IDF,” bloated with “the proceeds of collaboration.” .
. . Anderson is superior to all this. He says it’s war, and he wants
them to fight.